Honesty of U.S.-and-allied news-media has declined since 2002.

Eric Zuesse

In 2002, the biggest topic in the news was whether or not Iraq was making and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (WMD), especially nuclear weapons but also chemical weapons. The U.N.-authorized agency to investigate this in regard to the main issue, which then was nuclear weapons, is and was the IAEA. As I have documented previously, the leaders of America and of UK, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, both said on 7 September 2002 that the IAEA had come out with a “new report” that said Iraq was only six months from having a nuclear weapon; the IAEA then denied three times that it had, but this denial was kept secret in all U.S.-and-allied news-media; and, meanwhile, on 8 September 2007, U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice delivered her famous “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” statement, and Bush himself addressed the U.N. General Assembly on 12 September 2007 about the matter, and the buildup to the U.S.-and-UK invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 was steady, and the IAEA’s having denied that what Bush and Blair had said on 7 September 2002 was true, remained unknown to the public.

The good matter back then was that the IAEA didn’t confirm the U.S. and UK leaders’ lies then. The bad matter today is that such a fabrication by a U.N. WMD inspection agency, in this case by the one that’s concerned with chemical weapons, which is the OPCW, has now been successfully done in order for top U.S. and UK Government officials, such as Donald Trump and Theresa May, not to be proven to have committed an international war-crime on 14 April 2018 in response to an actually U.S.-and-allied deadly attack against civilians in the town of Douma on 7 April 2018 that was set-up and reported to the public as having been perpetrated instead by Syria’s Government. Though the 20 OPCW employees, all of whom were experts in chemical weaponry, and who were in the inspection team that entered Syria on 12 April 2018 and that participated in the collection of samples and in the interviews with the witnesses there, found only evidence that contradicted the U.S.-and-allied allegations that Syria’s Government instead of its enemies had perpetrated it, their findings were hidden by the OPCW and never reported to the public. Not even the OPCW itself did.

Then, on 27 January 2023, The Gray Zone headlined “Tanks for the memories – live with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate” and Mate explained how the just-issued final report from the OPCW has totally ignored and didn’t even mention what its own employees had found at the site but instead hired outside ‘experts’ whom it had selected and paid to confirm the U.S.-and-allied allegations on the matter. Mate said he’d be presenting details in his future reports on it. I have long followed Mate’s career as an investigative journalist and I have never found him to have asserted anything that the evidence he cited failed to prove to be so. He, like I, is exceedingly careful never to rely upon mere opinion or on any bogus ‘evidence’; but, instead, to expose its being speculative or bogus — as he has been doing throughout his many reports regarding the 7 April 2018 Douma event.

So, this entire matter appears to indicate that, unlike what happened with one U.N.-authorized WMD inspection agency, the IAEA, in 2002, when it exposed the lie by the leaders of U.S. and UK regarding nuclear weapons but the news-media hid that fact from the public, a different U.N.-authorized WMD inspection agency, the OPCW, is, now, itself, actually controlled by the U.S. White House and its many agencies and fronts, of which this U.N.-authorized WMD inspection agency is, now, itself one. The OPCW’s just-released final report on the Douma incident, released on 27 January 2023, titled “OPCW Releases Third Report by Investigation and Identification Team: Reasonable grounds to identify Syrian Arab Air Forces as perpetrators of 2018 Douma chemical attack”, blames Syria’s Government instead of the U.S., UK, and their many fronts. (The full report is to be found here.)

Whereas in 2002, the U.S. White House controlled only its news-media and not the U.N., it now apparently controls both. Consequently: U.S.-and-allied news-media have the cooperation of an agency authorized by the U.N., so as to hide international war-crimes perpetrated by and on behalf of the U.S. White House, and are thus internationally ‘authorized’ to participate in covering-up that guilt, only the press were doing that back in 2002. International ‘news’ reported in The West was exceedingly untrustworthy in 2002 but has since become even worse — even less reliable or trustworthy — than that. The only way that this can now become even worse than it already is, is by increasing the censorship (such as by everything from the New York Times and CNN to Google and Facebook to NewsGuard — and by the U.S.-and-allied Governments themselves) in The West — which is constantly happening. Only by censoring-out truth (such as has happened in this Douma matter) can The West’s news-media continue to draw paying subscribers.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.